Okay, first thanks for all the kind words. This was definitely a labor of love, and I appreciate everyone who left a nice message.
What I am going to do now is basically dump the data I currently have, with a few caveats. You will then have everything I have. Over the next few months, I am going to go through all my player by player sheets and update them. I am changing the formatting a bit, I am adding new cards that may have been logged in VCP since I originally cataloged that player, and just double checking everything. I have no idea how long this will take. I am currently between jobs, so I have a bit of free time right now, but I suspect that free time is going to evaporate quickly once I start my new job. So, I may not have anything to add for a few months, or longer, in terms of updates. But, I want to share what I have now so you have something. Down the road, my plan is to actually create some kind of website to house all the data, and to be able to update it in real time and make it accessible. For now, this thread will be the place.
I am going to provide the data based on the number of backs I found for each player, which might show interesting patterns or trends. I will check this thread obviously and answer any questions anyone has, but if I don't reply for a few days, my apologies in advance.
* Caveat 1: I am not including Dots Miller in my list. One of his 3 cards is included in the main 208 set (Middle Initial B), but as I noted in a previous post, his cards are the most difficult to ascertain because you need to have a very high quality, zoomable scan to see the middle initial, and the overprint version of the card is challenging to see without it.
* Caveat 2: Danny Hoffman has 3 variations, a white base (the card in the main set), Yellow Base with Stripe and Yellow Base Without Stripe. Depending on the quality of the scan/the condition of the card, these can be tough to tell. I will spend more time when I double check his card to make sure counts are as accurate as possible. The numbers I have for him now are good, but it is one I will double check for sure.
* Caveat 3: As I said previously, I started this project in May of last year. It took me basically until January of this year to finish. Over that time, there have been new cert numbers popping up, so the totals I am going to show you are 99% up to date, but not 100%. I have re-counted a few cards (starting at A) and noticed that I was able to add 4-5 cards per front in this update. I suspect as people keep grading cards, new examples will pop up. The directional accuracy is the most important thing in this data, imo. You might see one new Piedmont, one new Sovereign, etc. But the trends and overall percentages should remain stable, given the sample size we have. If that changes over time, that will be interesting to track.
* Caveat 4: Again, this is only graded cards where a front/back scan is available, and the scan is legible. I found tons of examples in the VCP database where only the front scan was available, no back, and so it is impossible to tell what the card is. Again, directional accuracy/scarcity.
* Caveat 5: Below, I will use the phrase "more populous" a lot. This simply means, "I saw more of these", it should not imply this is an exact population report. This is obviously not a pure population report. It is a census. A sampling.
Okay, thats that. Now, on to the data
Cards with 2 Different Backs
These are the 12 minor leaguers + one outlier. I talked about the MLers earlier, they are very heavily weighted to the Hassan 649 Back, the Polar Bear is much tougher.
The outlier is the Graham Rustlers card with the black signature, which is what has been assumed to be the "correct" card, since all other players in the set have a black signature. Graham Rustlers Blue Signature is actually much more populous (I will show that one later) but the Black Signature version was much less populous and I only saw it in two backs, Piedmont 25 and Cycle. If you have a Black Sig copy in a different back, I'd love to see it. This was another card that required more time and care when logging because the signature color is only really clear on a small part of the card.
Cards with 3 backs
Here we have a grouping of the 13 short prints that are found in only Piedmont 25, Hassan 30 and Cycle.
We have 2 additional rule breakers, the Rustlers/Cubs traded cards of Shean and Graham and the Bobby Wallace No Cap 2 Lines of Stats. The two Cubs cards are found in Polar Bear and both Hassan backs, with the Hassan 649 being more populous for both. The Wallace card has a variation with only 1 line of stats, more to come on that one later.
Cards with 4 backs
These are all rulebreakers....or maybe that means there is no rule. The Dougherty is a variation, he also has a "Red Sock" version. The Hoffman White Base is one I noted above, and again, I want to re-check this one very closely to make sure nothing was missed. The Doc White is by far the most populous of these cards, and his variation which is "No Quotes Around Doc" is only found with a Polar Bear back, or at least that was the only back I saw.
Cards with 5 backs
There are 2 distinct groupings here for the 5 back fronts.
These cards all have a Piedmont 42 back. The Piedmont 42 is much more common for this set of fronts. These are not short prints, but they are definitely lower population cards and tougher to find.
These cards do not have Piedmont 42 backs. Excluding the two rulebreakers, this batch contains Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, both Hassan backs as well as Honest Long Cut. The two rulebreakers are Chase Frame Ends and Dolly Gray No Stats. The Chase of course is one of the more famous variations, as he has a Frame Extends version (more on that later). His Frame Ends variation has a Cycle back but not an Honest Long Cut. The Gray is also a variation, as he has a rare version with stats on the back.
Cards with 6 backs
I wrote this one up yesterday, but posting it again here for consistency. The Collins Mouth Closed is an interesting card because it has a Hassan 649 back while none of the others in this subset do, and it is missing an American Beauty back. If you have a Collins Mouth Closed with an American Beauty back, I'd love to see it.
Cards with 7 backs
There are a few interesting groupings of fronts with 7 different backs. First
All of these cards have a Piedmont 42 back. 11 of the 14 cards have the same back pattern: Piedmont 25 and 42, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest Long Cut and American Beauty. Three of the cards have a slightly different configuration, with a Sweet Cap Red back, no Hassan backs, and then a Sovereign and Cycle back. These 3 outliers also had much lower populations based on what I saw. Not sure why.
I had to stich this one together because it contained so many fronts. These cards with 7 backs do not have a Piedmont 42, but they have the exact same configuration: Piedmont 25, all 3 Sweet Cap backs, Polar Bear, Honest and Sovereign. I have nothing else to add here.
Cards with 8 backs
There are 2 groups of cards here as well. First
12 of the 15 fronts here have the same configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty and Cycle.
The three outliers are interesting. As I noted yesterday, I have a raw Foxen with an AB back, so it exists, even though I saw zero graded copies. The fact that I saw zero graded copies in 15+ years of data indicates to me that it is a very difficult card. Fletcher has the same configuration as Foxen though I haven't seen an American Beauty back on the Fletcher. Looking at this, I'd assume it exists. The Matty card is a famous example and easily explainable. He'd fit the same criteria as the 12 other fronts, except his Cycle card had the misprint, showing only 1 loss instead of 11.
Second group
There are 19 cards shown here. 14 of them show a common pattern: Piedmont 25, all 3 Sweet Caps, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign and Hindu. The other 5 feature 2 variations and 3 cards with the same pattern. The Hoblitzell and Latham contain the same configuration: Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf, Drum.
The other 3 cards also share the same configuration: Piedmont, Sweet Cap Red only, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf. Do they have Drum backs? I wouldn't see why they wouldnt. Why did Leach, Lobert and Paskert not get printed with the Sweet Cap Black backs? No idea.
Cards with 9 backs
There are a few interesting anomalies here. The 2 cards without a Piedmont 42 (Corridon and Shean Rustlers) have the same back configuration: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf, Drum.
The other 7 cards have slightly different configurations
Crandall T Crossed does not have a Sweet Cap Red. His T Not Crossed variation has Piedmont 25 and Sweet Cap Red, so clearly his T Crossed variation is missing Sweet Cap Red because all of the Sweet Cap Reds for him were T Not Crossed.
Harry McIntyre has a similar configuration to the other 5, but he has a Hassan 649 back, which the others don't and he is missing the American Beauty back, as best I can tell.
The other 5 have the same configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle
Cards with 10 backs
You can separate these into 3 groupings:
6 cards have this configuration: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle, Broad Leaf
8 cards have this configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty and Cycle
2 cards (both HOFs) have this configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle, Broad Leaf.
Cards with 11 backs
These cards fit into 2 nice groups. The 4 cards with a Piedmont 42 back do not have a Hassan 649 back. The rest do not have a Piedmont 42 and have a Hassan 649. For the 4 cards that only have a Hassan 30 with a Piedmont 42, the Hassan 30 back was much less populous than a typical Hassan 30 back.
The variations
Obviously these are a scattershot that I won't go through in detail. If anything looks incorrect, call it out so I can add it to my list to double check as I go through everything again.
One more bonus chart.
The 20 most populous cards I saw
No surprise that the list is dominated by the Hall of Famers, as they will generally sell for more/be worth more, and hence, the desire to get them graded. The Matty was magnitudes more plentiful than the Cobb, which is at least somewhat interesting to me.
That is all for now. As I said, if you have any specific questions about the data or my methods, I will do my best to answer. If you have copies of cards that don't show up in my census (ie, a back that shows up as missing/zero, but you have a scan of the front/back) I'd love to see it. If you are going to tell me "I see 4 copies of this card, not 3", I'd refer you to my caveats section above.
Thanks for reading.